What Happened With The NBN This Week?

After the flurry of announcements around its three year plan, things got serious this week, with NBN Co buying spectrum, announcing income and bringing some services back in-house in this week's wrap of NBN news.

• In the six months to December 2011, NBN Co took in $356,000 in revenue; that means to that date it was running at a loss of $221 million. [ZDNet]

• Coalition attacks on the NBN continue, with Malcolm Turnbull arguing that the NBN has failed to connect up as many "greenfield" estates at it has predicted. He's correct, but hang on -- isn't coalition policy all about scrapping the NBN anyway? [Malcolm Turnbull]

• A truly bizarre bit of "logic" from an "expert" says that the NBN will be "obsolete" because we're all shifting to Tablets and Smart Phones. Umm… what backend does he predict that we'll be connecting to? [Herald Sun]

• In any case, the NBN has a wireless play of its own, and its six month report detailed how it had picked up 850MHz of spectrum in the 28GHz spectrum band from AAPT -- but not how much it had paid for it, citing commercial confidence. [ZDNet]

• Having outsourced its call centre operations to Service Stream last year, NBN Co this week announced it was shifting those roles back in-house to a a call centre on the Gold Coast. [ITWire]

• Canberra-based TransACT was granted an exemption to the anti cherry-picking legislation that would otherwise require it to operate upgrades on a wholesale basis, and can now upgrade its existing network to VDSL2, as well as roll out a new FTTH service in Canberra's south. [ITNews]